1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer software.
2. Description of the Background Art
Whole program analysis enables aggressive compiler optimizations and improvements to a software program's runtime performance. The ultimate goal of whole program analysis is to analyze source code for substantially the entire program during the compilation phase to obtain an optimized compilation. One difficulty with whole program analysis is that the compiler normally does not have access to the source code of the entire program and so does not have access to all the information it needs for optimization. Instead, the compiler typically only has access to source code provided to the compiler by the programmer (user), but not access to the source code for previously compiled object files of a library or separate load module. Without access to this information, the compiler cannot fully identify all the different relationships between the various portions of the whole program.
Obstacles to the widespread use and adoption of whole program analysis include the following. First, many software applications are developed using third party shared libraries for which source code is unavailable. Second, some software applications are developed using previously compiled modules from a third party, and source code for these modules is typically unavailable. Third, even if a software program is being developed without third party shared libraries or modules, a programmer often chooses to partition the sources and build them into shared libraries.